


In the Palace of Waxed Fruit

by NaturalEvil



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Medieval, F/M, Fem!Nero, Rule 63, Wedding Feast
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25400872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaturalEvil/pseuds/NaturalEvil
Summary: She had been promised to him since she was a child; her womanhood bargained for and sold off long before she would even be granted a chance to experience it.Nero was five years old, as gamine and sprightly as a small white colt. Ignorant of her stone-carved future, she thought of nothing but of when she would get to eat a poached pear again; and was fond of butchering imaginary animals in hare’s tail grass.She was called ‘devil child’ by those who looked after her; exasperated nannies and handmaidens who could only fancy being able to control such a bizarre and unruly thing.“Nero, stop it! Behave yourself at once!”It was the mantra of her girlhood.A girlhood that ended when Death came over for a visit.
Relationships: Doppelganger/Nero (Devil May Cry), Nero & Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 19





	1. Death Comes For a Visit

Her father’s name was Vergil, who was the rightful and unquestioned heir to the Sparda throne. He was a man who did not make his daughter feel hated, but instead unloved. 

His appearances to her were rare, and his affection a scarce resource that she abhorred due to its infrequency and falsehood.

Lessons of her role as princess and future queen were explained over vast food-laden tables. Her posture and demeanor scolded and corrected time and time again. His eyes, blue and thunder-clouded, analyzed and magnified her shortcomings. The displeased wrinkle of his brow a seemingly permanent fixture of his anatomy; it was far more recognizable to her than the iron-gray hue of his hair, than his frown and even his name.

One day, during a time when Nero was hiding from her nanny and hunting for fae-folk among purple mushrooms, a man rode to their castle on a great black destrier.

When she saw the steed and its rider, she was convinced that it was Death, and ducked down low in the grass, her chin resting on the cool dark soil; bits of dirt tickling her nostrils as she breathed, her knees scratched and wet. 

He was the embodiment of a grand dark empire that her father aspired to create. Hair as black as soot, the color of his flesh like that of a foreigner, reminding her of the cherry wood the cooks hacked to chips and used to smoke meat.

She did not hear the footsteps coming from her side.

“There you are! Devil child!” Her nanny hissed and yanked her to her feet by the crook of a dirty pale elbow, already pulling her towards the castle. Nero whined as her chin was wiped clean by the hem of an apron, twisting her face away to look at Death as he headed towards the castles main entrance.

“Is he coming for papa?” Nero asked, watching the massive ebony horse snort and stomp its hooves into the earth. 

She was not answered, and instead was given pottage to eat in the parlor, rewarded afterwards with a handful of dried figs for being still and quiet.

The door to her father’s study was closed, which she knew meant that only matters of the utmost importance were occurring. That she was never to disturb him, even if she had been wounded and was on the cusp of death.

She was playing with a curtain when she heard glass being broken, and quickly put her hands behind her back even though she was not the source of the noise. “It was not me,” she whispered, even though no one was around to discipline her.

She heard another crash, like a chair falling over; grunting, struggling, and some handmaidens rushed past her, and she followed them.

The door to her father’s study burst open, and Death had a man in his arms. His furs were stained with blood, teeth bared like a wolf, his fist was kept to the man’s throat; and a quiet wet gurgle was all that could be heard.

Behind them, her father sat at his desk, silent and watchful, a broken wine bottle bleeding onto the documents in front of him. 

Nero looked on as a dagger was dropped onto the carpet, as clean as when it had been unsheathed, from the man’s limp grasp. Death let the man, her father’s would-be assassin, collapse down onto the carpet, the neck of a shattered wine bottle in his hand.

She was already being ushered away by her nanny when Death looked at her over to her, panting with his fists sharp and red, and he smiled.

She did not know that he was the one she had been promised to marry. 


	2. A Dark Forest Wedding

Ten years had passed since the day that Death had saved her father’s life. Though there were many long and bitter days where Nero wished he had not been so generous.

She was made aware of the proposal since she had her first bleeding, and accepted it with a bizarre and nearly mournful silence. The man she named Death was nothing but a grinning shadow in her memory; a great black nothing that broke wine bottles and rode on the back of a gargantuan well-bred horse.

She had not seen him since that day, and wondered if he had changed at all since then.

Nero despised the powder-blue dress that was presented to her for the ceremony; though lovely in appearance, it was a cumbersome and restrictive gown. Delicate in all the ways that she was not; it was a silk-and-pearl mockery to her temperament; like using snowflakes to honor a balefire. 

She knew that her father had picked it out for her.

Nero only sighed as her short silver hair was combed by deft servant-girl hands, flowers braided seamlessly into the locks. As rouge was brushed to her cheeks, all Nero could think of was how she would rather be out hunting; traveling through the burnt umber veins of the land that was rightfully hers.

She missed the smell of wild mushrooms rupturing under her boots, releasing their spores out into the damp air, latching themselves onto her clothes and skin; invisible passengers riding the red dagger at her hip.

Her cheeks were pink as she turned the sachet over in her hands, wrinkling her nose at the sugar-sweet stench of the thing, wishing that it was filled with creeping thyme instead.

It was her wedding day, and still she wore her dagger. Her Red Queen, strapped fittingly to her thigh. A slit notoriously cut into the gown for easy access, lest the ceremony be interrupted by a pack of ravenous footpads. 

She stared at her reflection, her image likened to that of an innocent painted maiden, and wondered what her dowry was.

Land? Riches? Armies? 

Every time she asked her father for an answer, he would get angry. She was a woman now, yet he treated her as if she were still that burdensome little girl who could be bribed into silence by pudding and dried fruit.

“It isn’t anything tangible that _I_ have, I can assure you of that much, daughter,” Her father would tell her time and time again, always grinning afterwards with a secretive glint in his dark eyes.

It was as if her father had made a deal with the devil, and had promised not his own soul but hers.

Nero did not know what to think of that.

As her lips were painted a weak scarlet, all Nero could see was how it looked as if she had been daintily feasting on the remains of a rabbit.

As the final touches to her appearance were made, a delicate black veil was draped over her head, covering her head and neck as if she were a widow in mourning.

When she asked why she was to wear the burdensome thing, she was only told that it was at the request of her soon-to-be husband, and no means to elaborate were given.

* * *

The ceremony was modest, taking place unusually deep in the forest; though Nero welcomed it, always in favor of forgoing any reason to step into the walls of a church.

The ring that Death placed on her fourth finger fit comfortably, the metal black as night with a single garnet jewel embedded in the center like the gouged eye of a Cyclops.

The feast afterwards was the only part that Nero enjoyed, in spite of the veil that her groom had asked her to continue wearing through the festivities. She had taken a liking to brusque wine, greedy for taste after taste. The chalice that she drank out of decorated with a spear-wielding dragoon, who began to sway, just a little. 

But in spite of the merriment around her, her fine garments and the ring on her finger, Nero felt no different. It was as if she were still the same young girl that she had been since before the ceremony began.

Which she was, in spite of being married to Death, who was still as enigmatic as ever, even as his hand warmed her thigh, uncomfortably close to her Red Queen.

Though the black veil, Nero looked her towards her father, who sat staring at her with an impish smile in his eyes, chewing his food without looking or seeming to acknowledge its flavor.

Nero was unaware that once the food had been eaten and the wine had been drunk, the bedding ceremony would begin. 


End file.
